Nationality United States Fields Biochemistry Education Oberlin College | Name W. Cleland Notable awards Repligen Award | |
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Born January 6, 1930
Baltimore, Maryland ( 1930-01-06 ) Alma mater Oberlin College (A.B., 1950)
University of Wisconsin (M.S., 1953) (Ph.D., 1955) Known for Enzyme kinetics and mechanism Died March 6, 2013, Madison, Wisconsin, United States | ||
William Wallace Cleland (January 6, 1930 – March 6, 2013), often cited as W. W. Cleland, was a University of Wisconsin-Madison biochemistry professor. His research was concerned with enzyme reaction mechanism and enzyme kinetics, especially multiple-substrate enzymes. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1985.
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Life and education
Cleland was born in 1930 in Baltimore, Maryland. He received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1950 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1953 and 1955, respectively. He was an avid stamp collector and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in Philately by the Smithsonian Institution in 2008. Cleland died on March 6, 2013 after falling on ice.
Career
After carrying out postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago he returned to University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he became Assistant Professor in 1959. In 1962 he was promoted to Associate Professor and then Professor in 1966. He became J. Johnson Professor of Biochemistry in 1978, and Steenbock Professor of Chemical Science in 1982.
Scientific contributions
Cleland was well known for being the first to utilize dithiothreitol for the reduction of disulfide bonds in proteins. The compound is therefore often called Cleland's reagent. His research interests focus on the use of enzyme kinetics to deduce enzyme mechanisms, primarily those mechanisms involved in phosphoryl and acyl transfers. He was a pioneer in the kinetic and mechanistic study of enzymes that utilize more than one substrate.